It's a Lot Less Epic than You'd Think
by Metroid13
Summary: John and Cameron square off against a new enemy. But he's...a bit quirky.


**It's a Lot Less Epic than You'd Think**

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the intellectual property that is depicted in this story.

Author's Note: This is a crossover, unfortunately. Oh well. Full steam ahead!

John was laying in bed, plaid blanket lazily half draped across his legs. Hands wrapped and locked behind his head, he looked expectantly at Cameron, who was sitting at the edge. They'd been there for about a minute since he flopped down on the bed and made himself comfortable. Doing nothing. Waiting. John's heart fluttered in anticipation for what Cameron had promised him. He was sort of annoyed that she hadn't started yet.

"Well?" he said, trying not to let the obvious lump in his throat reveal itself. The baited breath. His left hands fingers were absently scratching his right. He could see his chest rising and falling irregularly, and he knew he couldn't keep the excitement from showing. He nodded his head slightly.

Cameron just stared for a while. John said nothing and waited. Oh man, he could barely...

"C'mon," he said suddenly. "Like we talked about,"

Cameron smirked and rolled her eyes visibly. It was for his benefit, but at this point he didn't really care. He couldn't keep the silly grin off his face. Here it comes...

Cameron cleared her throat and closed her eyes tightly. Her inflection went all dramatic and wistful, reciting.

"'Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife.'"

She said it all in Spanish. John followed perfectly. He was grinning rather blatantly now, and he could scarcely keep the giggles from escaping his mouth. Cameron opened a single eye and it flashed with a brilliance he didn't think she'd had. Christ, he was happy. How could a night like this go wrong?

--

"Aratech Technologies Company thanks you for activating this long-range anti-sentient disintegration cannon! If you are utilizing this weapon in the middle of a battlefield, please press 'OK' to terminate this tutorial. If you are _not_ in a combat situation, we at Aratech urge you to please pay attention! This could save your life!"

"To view your immediate angular horizon at a 25x telescopic range, please press your vision appendages (or insets) against the finder scope!"

"Thank you! To arm, please-"

"Thank you! As you can see, there are a number of options that-"

"Skipping tutorial. Select target. Scanning infrared. Stopped. Scanning heat signature tracker. Sentients detected; 2 targets. 1 semi-organic semi-metal. Please finalize target."

"Acknowledged! Have a nice day."

--

"'When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around-'" Cameron's head whipped up and her eyes flashed blue for a split second. She looked toward the window. John frowned.

"¿Qué?_"_he said, a chill running down his spine. He absently shook his head and repeated the same word in English.

"Get down," Cameron said briskly. John scrambled up from the bed, ran its length for a second while upright, and dived to the floor. As soon as he launched himself from the bed, a tiny, almost invisible but insanely bright orange beam of light pierced through the back wall and hissed almost an inch beneath him. A second later and he collapsed onto the ground.

"Keep moving!" Cameron yelled. Without waiting for a response she tore a SIG-Sauer pistol from her belt and cracked the window into pieces. She fired off several shots. John yelled out in semi-panic, semi-shock at the loud, piercing barks. The sniper --had to be a sniper, but...-- fired again. The orange light buzzed through the wall and burned a slight hole in the floor near John's face. He gasped in terror and rolled back, absently knowing that it might be a death sentence. _Any_ motion could be a death sentence. Staying put, also a death sentence. So he had to move.

Cameron continued firing until the clip ran dry, and even then there were a few clicks. She stared out the window for a few seconds. John continued shimmying towards the door. He was tightly regulating his breathing, although his heart was probably skipping a few beats every other second. Don't panic. Never panic. Just get out of there, _run!_ And...and Cameron!

"Run!" he yelled, perhaps a bit late. He jerked his head back and stared at her, hoping, from his position, he at least looked as dashing and courageous as he was trying to seem. But she wasn't looking at him, so he supposed it didn't really matter. She was looking outside, idly reloading her pistol.

"I got rid of the gun," she said absently. Her voice was very distant, unfocused. John raised an eyebrow. So the assassin was disarmed. Cool. Why did she sound so shocked?

"What!" he yelled.

She turned around and looked at him, eyes wide. "It isn't a Terminator."

"_IT?"_

The word was barely out of his mouth before a hail of bright red lasers came crashing through the wall.

--

_An hour later._

They were huddled in the upstairs bathroom. Cameron was hunched over John's prostrate body, both of them in the tub. She was busily cleaning a wound on his right forearm. It was firey and rather pinkish, though when John first saw it it had been bright red. A laser had penetrated and barely missed the bone, Cameron told him. He had all the luck, yeah. A shame about the _screeching pain_.

He doubled over as she rubbed more alcohol on it. It burned like a frickin' motherfucker, sonofabitch mother-

"Stop, stop," he just about babbled, unable to take it anymore. Cameron obligingly removed the gauze pad and glanced at his face. Bowed over, she couldn't see it. He was breathing pretty heavily, his mind was utterly blank.

"Hurts," he said, as though to justify himself. "Bad."

"It's cauterized," said Cameron.

That meant nothing to him. He leaned his head back against the hard, curved surface of the tub and shut his eyes tight. A Beretta pistol was clutched in his right hand. His body was drenched in sweat after an hour of playing cat-and-mouse with their assassin. John had only caught glimpses of it. Orange. Chrome. Comically huge, slanty eyes. Red eyes. It was obviously a Terminator, but Cameron adamantly refused to call it that. So what if she was unfamiliar with the fucking model? What did it matter?! Christ, it hurt, it hurt it hurt _christ._

"Am I crying?" he asked, not looking at her.

"No," Cameron said, looking a tad confused with the question. "You handle pain very well."

John smirked and let out a dry chuckle. He looked up and saw her fingering one of the grenades she'd attached to her belt. A Franchi-SPAS shotgun was strapped to her back. She'd been shot by their assailant multiple times. Not that it mattered. She looked so uninterested in pain right then, or even acknowledging the fact that she looked like a ham that had been left in the oven for a while longer than it should have. She looked _worried._

"Cam...What is that thing?"

"I don't know."

"What's it got?"

"Focused pin-point laser offensive technology, far above levels that current theoretical experiment can reliably sustain, and in such a compact form as a small-arms to boot. Much more advanced than doped weaponized plasma." God, she sounded _appraising._

John gulped. He couldn't hear anything. The house was a disaster, but there weren't any flames. He couldn't hear footsteps. But it was still in the house. Waiting. "'Current?'"

"2027," Cameron said.

John let that sink in for a moment before regretting it and pushing it back out. _No._ How many years into the future must that thing be? Was it a T-billion kaphillion something? Christ.

Cameron was frowning. "It's red. That's strange."

"What?" he said, his voice a bit slurred. He must sound drunk or something. But what did it matter?

"The lasers are red, not invisible. That's very strange."

God.

Footsteps outside. Loud, clanking. He could hear servos and hydraulics quite well. John wasn't afraid. He was fucking angry. This thing was incomprehensible to him. It just attacked out of no where, and with technology far above what Skynet was capable of producing. They had to get rid of it. Cameron tilted her arm back, grenade clutched in her hand. John laid his hands out on the side of the tub, Beretta outstretched. He aimed down the sight and waited. Cameron waited. The thing outside waited, had stopped.

Terrible, roaring silence reigned for about ten minutes before a voice penetrated through the air.

"Impatient demand: Must _everything_ be a drama with you pathetic meatbag? Come out at once!"

John fancied that there was a literal, screeching, _creaking_ noise as his eyes slid over to Cameron's. She looked very much like how he felt. Like he'd just seen an elephant with wings walk the tight-rope.

The voice was high. Nasal. Officious and upper-crust. There was a trace, just a_ trace_ of an English accent. It couldn't be explained, it couldn't be heard, it couldn't be _thought_ of as monotonous, as associated with a Terminator's voice. It sounded far too annoyed for that.

Amazingly, John found his voice first; "What are you after!"

"Answer: John Connor. Are you John Connor? Please say yes. I would hate to have wasted my time ventilating the wrong house!"

A short, business like chuckle from the other end. Fully computerized. It sounded legitimate just the same. John felt like he was gonna piss himself.

Aw, hell. "No," he half-squeaked.

Some silence. Cameron looked positively beside herself in analyzation, her eyes huge, features slackened. Finally, the voice returned, sounding placating, almost sweet; "Suspicious query: Are you sure you're not John Connor?"

"Yes."

"Retort: Positive?"

"Yes!"

"Accusation: Liar, you pathetic meatbag! _Liar._"

"Ohh shit," John whimpered. He looked back to Cameron.

Cameron's eyes traveled up to the door and focused, "State series designate, state model serial number, state market placement year-"

"Interruption: Are you asking me who I am?"

"Affirmative," Cameron said.

"Disclosure: I am HK-47. My primary --and favorite, if I do say so myself-- purpose is to assassinate meatbags such as yourself, _John Connor!"_

They looked at each other, nearly smashing their foreheads together. After recoiling, John babbled, "Uh, huh, HK! Yeah. It must be from the future!"

"Irritated clarification: I am not from the future, _John Connor! _Would you please spare us the mutual suffering and come out?"

"He's not from the future," Cameron said unnecessarily.

"Fuck!" John said.

"Commentary: I'm waiting..."

John turned back toward the door, half dragging himself out of the tub in his panic. He was moving, wobbling, jittering. Cameron dragged him back in as he yelled, "Where are you from?!"

"Answer: A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away," came HK-47's reply. It sounded sarcastic.

John, who simply did not have a head for sarcasm at the time, asked, "You're from the past?!"

"Expletive: It's a _phrase_, damnit! Can we just get this over with?!"

Cameron said, "Why don't you just come in here?"

John gawked at her.

"Eager agreement: What a wonderful idea! I'm coming for you, _John Connor! _You pathetic sack of flesh, you..."

"He's not John Connor!" Cameron said.

An exasperated sigh from beyond the door. John was silently banging his head against the tub wall. He was gonna die. Die at the hands of an overly sadistic, orange robot. "J-O-H-N-E C-O-N-N-A-H. _JOHN CONNOR. _Are you happy, meatbag lover? Have I made you happy? Can I _please_ kill him now?"

Cameron grinned, "This isn't Johne Connah. He's John Baum."

John Connor raised an eyebrow.

They both repeated the spellings. And then there was a long silence from beyond the door. John could imagine the urbane little bot shaking in fury. He didn't know why, he just did.

"Resigned query: I assume you have documentation on which to prove this?"

"Yes." She looked fucking relieved. "Do you need them?"

"Refusal: Um, no. I suppose not. Just...damnit. Just..."

They both heard metal feet shuffling away, dejected. They both jerked as a metallic hand pounded on the wall in frustration. And then silence. Blessed, lovely silence.

"Holy crap," John whispered, his voice filled with distant awe.

He felt more than saw Cameron's nodding agreement.


End file.
